Delhi Assembly elections: How AAP's sheen wore off and what lies ahead

AAP neither has the leadership nor workers in most of the states due for elections in the next couple of years. It also would need to prepare to protect its turf in Punjab

The future of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), India’s most successful political startup of the last four decades, looks bleak after its defeat in the Delhi Assembly polls. It is likely that AAP’s ‘Delhi model’ of development, despite its fiscal pitfalls, replicated by several state governments either fully or partially, would live on.

 

Let’s look at what led to AAP’s defeat in Delhi and why this jolt could lead to the unravelling of the AAP experiment. 

 

The Arvind Kejriwal-led party emerged from the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement of 2011-12. It portrayed itself as a post-ideology party committed to solving difficulties that citizens face with the delivery of government services, and ensuring quality affordable education and healthcare.

 

In Delhi, it spoke for the interests of the poor and the lower middle class with its welfare schemes and keeping water and power supply tariffs low. It also appealed to the sensibilities of Delhi's cosmopolitan middle class that is usually cynical of most political parties and politicians. Kejriwal became the new age, seemingly incorruptible, meritocratic politician. That he had quit his job as an officer in the elite Indian Revenue Service embellished his appeal as someone who would clean up politics. 

 

The party secured a famous win in Delhi in 2015, winning 67 of 70 seats with a massive vote share of 54.34 per cent. No party has, or had, ever achieved that feat.

 

In the run up to the Assembly polls in Delhi that year, Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had secured India’s first single party majority since 1984 in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Subsequently, the BJP won the Assembly polls in Jharkhand and Haryana. It formed governments with the help of allies in Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir.  It was a spectacular phase for the BJP. The Delhi Assembly poll loss was the first shock that the BJP suffered in that phase after a string of successes. 

 

AAP and its rising trajectory

 

AAP built on its Delhi success by emerging the principal Opposition party in the Punjab Assembly in 2017.

 

From 2015 to 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, AAP ran with the hare and hunted with hounds. In 2018, AAP launched its campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Ayodhya. It vied for the leadership of the Opposition block, aligning forces with the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress.

 

AAP performed poorly in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but soon started preparing for the Delhi Assembly polls. In 2019 August, AAP supported the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government when Parliament repealed Article 370 of the Constitution that granted Jammu and Kashmir special status. It also welcomed the Supreme Court judgement on the Ram temple.

 

In Delhi, AAP continued to reach out to all sections. For the 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, it responded to BJP’s call of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ with ‘Jai Bajrang Bali’. It all seemed to work for the party. 

 

Despite losing all the seven seats in Delhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, AAP again shocked the BJP in the 2020 Delhi Assembly polls, winning  62 seats with a 53.57 per cent vote share. The BJP’s vote share improved from 32.19 per cent (2015) to 38.51 per cent (2020), but was nowhere close to that of AAP. The Congress plummeted further, dropping from 9.65 per cent to 4.26 per cent.

 

However, the AAP experiment worked until it was confronted with difficult ideological choices, which were round the corner. Days after the 2020 Assembly polls, communal riots broke out in Northeast Delhi. AAP leadership, including its legislators, were conspicuous by their absence either in attempting to douse the fire or providing succour to the victims. It left communities disillusioned with AAP.

 

The alarm bells rang for AAP in the December 2022 civic polls in Delhi. The AAP leadership was busy in putting up a fight in Gujarat, where it made the contest a triangular one, further weakening the already feeble challenge that the Congress posed in that state to the ruling BJP.

 

In the Delhi civic polls, AAP emerged the single largest party, but its vote share was 42.05 per cent to the BJP’s 39.00 per cent. It was the first sign that the BJP had started bridging the gap between itself and AAP. Equally crucial from AAP's standpoint was the Congress' improved vote share to 11.68 per cent. The Congress either won seats or did well in areas with significant presence of minorities.

 

AAP- the downfall

 

AAP’s sheen as a party led by seemingly incorruptible leaders also wore off as the top leadership was jailed on allegations of corruption and irregularities in the alleged Delhi excise scam. The controversy over "sheesh mahal", the spanking new chief ministerial bungalow, eroded Kejriwal's image of a common man. The campaign by the BJP and also Congress that the AAP government did little in terms of capital expenditure, in improving Delhi's infrastructure in the last decade, struck a chord with the electors, especially the middle class sections.

 

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s work in Dalit localities, the BJP’s outreach to the middle class, including the Union Budget’s announcement of tax exemptions, and the government approving setting up the Pay Commission, all contributed to the BJP’s win. 

 

AAP now faces the prospect that its leader Kejriwal couldn’t win his seat. He also faces court cases, as do other top leaders. The only other government that AAP runs is in Punjab, where already a vacuum exists of a traditional panthic party with the decline of, and infighting within, the Shiromani Akali Dal.

 

AAP neither has the leadership nor workers in most of the states due for elections in the next couple of years, such as Bihar later this year and West Bengal, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, Kerala in May 2026. It would need to prepare to protect its turf in Punjab, which is scheduled for polls in March 2027, and the Delhi civic polls in December. The question is whether Kejriwal and his associates will be able to keep AAP united and battle-ready until that time.